Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Agriculture must adapt quickly in order to meet the challenges of climate change. Studying what needs to be done might not cut it, as food production is already seeing big decreases.

A new report says that farmers in the regions prone to drought must diversify their crops. The report authors recommend changing to cowpea and lentils, and growing less corn. Maize suffers greatly with little rain, while the varieties of beans can still grow without much of it.

By 2050, climate change could cause yield declines of 13 percent for
irrigated wheat crops and 15 percent for irrigated rice in developing
countries, the study warns. In Africa, farmers of maize - which is not
well-suited to higher temperatures - could lose 10 to 20 percent of
their yields, it adds.

Feeding livestock with maize and grain will also become more
expensive, and fish availability will be increasingly limited, warns the
analysis, which studied the potential effects of climate change on 22
of the world’s most important commodities, as well as water, forestry
and agroforestry.

“The problems that climate change produces in the fields will be
tackled in industrialised countries. It is the smallholder farmers in
Africa and South Asia and the urban poor who spend too much of their
wages on food - these are the people who will have less to eat in the
near future unless we adapt at a much faster pace,” Robert Zougmoré,
CCAFS programme leader for West Africa, said in a statement.

Millet and lentils, for example, are highly nutritious and can
withstand harsher growing conditions. Yet they are "not a bullet-proof
adaptation option since certain climate stresses can reduce their yields
as well", the brief notes.

"Ecosystem changes due to climate change may spawn shifts in the
intensity of pests and diseases, including potato blight and beetles,
that will further limit food production. Indeed, even if crops could
withstand increased temperatures and decreased rainfall, their yields
could drop because of these scourges,” said CCAFS scientist Philip
Thornton, who authored the study.
Plant breeders are working to develop new crop varieties that are
especially tolerant of heat, drought, flooding, salinity and crop
diseases. But this effort is time-consuming, expensive and requires
robust predictions of how growing conditions will change in different
parts of the world in the next few decades, the research says.

Another problem lies in convincing people to switch from cultivating
and eating a food staple such as maize to something new like cowpea -
often described as "the poor man’s meat". "This cultural challenge is
another facet of climate change adaptation that should get as much
attention as plant breeding," the brief urges.

More attention is being paid to "land grabs" by the highest levels of the United Nations. The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization says it is time to put some laws in place to curb the practice.

Large global investors are grabbing up large swaths of farm-able land in Africa and Asia. Often the governments that allow this to happen are corrupt and just do it for the money. The practice decreases the amount of land used in growing food for local consumption even further. Many experts feel that land grabs are one of the leading factors causing food insecurity of poor nations.

José Graziano da Silva, the FAO's director general, conceded it was
not possible to stop large investors buying land, but said deals in poor
countries needed to be brought under control.

"I don't see that
it's possible to stop it. They are private investors," said Graziano da
Silva in a telephone interview. "We do not have the tools and
instruments to stop big companies buying land. Land acquisitions are a
reality. We can't wish them away, but we have to find a proper way of
limiting them. It appears to be like the wild west and we need a sheriff
and law in place."

Large land deals have accelerated since the
surge in food prices in 2007-08, prompting companies and sovereign
wealth funds to take steps to guarantee food supplies. But, four to five
years on, in Africa only 10-15% of land is actually being developed,
claimed Graziano da Silva. Some of these investments have involved the
loss of jobs, as labour intensive farming is replaced by mechanised
farming or some degree of loss of tenure rights.

Oxfam said the global land rush is out of control
and urged the World Bank to freeze its investments in large-scale land
acquisitions to send a strong signal to global investors to stop.

Graziano da Silva, who was in charge of Brazil's widely praised "zero hunger"
programme, expressed his frustration at the slow pace of creating a
global governance structure to deal with land grabs, food security and
similar problems. In 2008, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, created a high-level task force on food security on which Graziano Da Silva serves as vice-chairman.

...

As for the perennial debate
on the respective merits of large- and small-scale farming, the FAO
boss said Africa had room for both, adding that Brazil had managed it.

"In
some areas of Africa – Mozambique and South Africa – there is scope for
large farms, but this approach is only valid for some grains, where the
entire cycle is mechanical," he said. "But this is not suitable for
fruits, vegetables or many other local products. Cassava has nothing to
do with mechanised agriculture and efficiency does not mean big scale.
It's the way you combine crops, the use of water you have available. In
Africa today, efficiency means better seeds
rather than big tractors. The two models have been there forever in
agriculture. Sometimes big-scale will provide exports, but local markets
are based on small-scale agriculture."

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Another new survey shows the increased health risks for people living in poverty. Not only do the poor have an increased risk of medical problems they can also be psychological. The latest survey finds a large gap in depression between those in poverty and those who are well off.

From the U.S. News and World Report, writer Danielle Kurtzleben unpacks the latest survey.

Of the illnesses tracked in a Gallup report
on the data, depression has the greatest gap between those in poverty
and not in poverty. Nearly 31 percent of adults who lived below the
poverty line in 2011 said they had been diagnosed with depression at
some point, almost twice as high as the rate for those not in poverty —
15.8 percent. The share of adults in poverty with asthma (17.1 percent)
or obesity (31.8 percent) was also roughly 6 percentage points higher in
each case than the share of adults not in poverty. The study also
showed that diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks were
slightly more likely to afflict those in poverty than those who are not.

"It was interesting to see that depression appears to
disproportionately affect those in poverty more than other chronic
conditions — and to see the extent of the difference," says Elizabeth
Mendes, deputy managing editor at Gallup, in an email to U.S. News.

While that finding is striking, the Gallup report points out that the
causal relationship between depression and poverty — not to mention the
other diseases listed in the study — is complicated. Depression can be
associated with other chronic illnesses, and depression can both lead to
and result from poverty. In addition, outside factors could contribute
to any of these problems.

One outside factor is health habits. Smoking was far more prevalent
among adults in poverty, 33 percent of whom said they were smokers,
compared to 19.9 percent of those not in poverty.

Predictions are for more dry conditions for the upcoming planting season in Zimbabwe. The country has suffered many poor harvests in a row due to low rainfall. With all of the successive small harvests, Zimbabwe is now producing less food than it eats.

After a long debate over using genetically modified seeds, the lack of food as prompted action in Zimbabwe. A new drought resistant seed for corn will be distributed this year. Farmers say that it is about time, but worry if will be cheap enough to afford.

The Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre
(SIRDC), in partnership with the University of Zimbabwe and
Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) has developed a drought-resistant
variety of maize seed called Sirdamaize 113.

Farmers have had to wait between 150 and 180 days before harvesting
their traditional maize crop, but the centre says the new seed takes
only 136 days to mature.

Thomas Ndlovu, a smallholder farmer in Nyamandlovu, some 60 km (38
miles) from Bulawayo, said the new seed was welcome news, as he has lost
his crop because of successive poor rains.

“This is what we have always asked for,” Ndlovu said. “My only hope
is that this seed variety is affordable to us. We have for some time now
been buying seed maize outside the country because the locally produced
type is expensive.”

SIRDC says research into drought-resistant maize began more than a
decade ago and has cost around $200,000. The centre’s current research
forms part of a policy on food and nutrition security adopted by
government early this year.

Already, more maize hybrids are being tested across the country as farmers prepare for the planting season.

This fresh commitment to scientific research could just a significant
help in a country where smallholder farmers, who produce up to 70
percent of the country’s food, continue to face severe challenges from
lack of farming inputs, absence of irrigation schemes and poor
weather-forecasting techniques.

To find the African version of Silicon Valley, you don't go to its richest nation in South Africa. Instead, you head to the heart to the Sub-Sahara in Kenya. The nation that still has quite a bit of poverty now has over 6 million broadband connections and 18 million internet users.

For more on how this internet expansion happened we read this article from the Guardian and writer David Smith.

Kenyans enjoy faster broadband connections than their counterparts in Africa's
economic powerhouse, South Africa. And the government plans to build a
$7bn (£4.36bn), 5,000-acre technology city that is already being
branded Africa's "Silicon Savannah".

How did Kenya – a nation that still has its share of poverty and ethnic conflict – get here? "It started as a joke," said Dr Bitange Ndemo permanent secretary at the information and communications ministry. "We said we wanted to beat South Africa – and we did it."

For
years Ndemo, a workaholic whose typical day runs from 5.30am to 11pm,
found himself bogged down in talks with other African countries about
linking to an undersea fibre optic cable that would bring high-speed internet access to millions of people.

"I
did a calculation: we were spending more on hotel rooms discussing it
than laying the cable," the 52-year-old recalled. "So we broke away and
went it alone. South Africa thought we were joking. We didn't know
anything about cables; I stayed up overnight reading about it on the
internet."

Since then the country has gone from fewer than 6,000 broadband connections to 6m, and from fewer than 3m internet users to 18m.

In
Ndemo's grand vision, technology is not an optional luxury but rather
central to 21st century education, development, economic growth – and
ending Africa's reliance on foreign aid. He has ambitions for
"e-learning" in schools across Kenya. "After the cable landed, we gave
unlimited capacity to all the universities.

"Access enables us to
become more innovative. Broadband allows people to build things you
never thought of. Four or five years ago you could not put the words
'Kenya', 'innovation' and 'research' in the same sentence. Now it is
starting to happen."

Monday, October 29, 2012

WBEZ in Chicago has this great profile on a single mother living below the poverty line. Children born to single mothers are four times likely to live in poverty. In this story, the single parent Sarah reveals how sometimes minimum wage work doesn't pay when you need to pay for daycare. In part two, we learn of how juggling the many government programs can seem like a full time job in itself.

The United Nations may have found its next big development project, ending child labor. The U.N. will unveil plans today to eliminate child labor by 2020. A new study by the U.N. shows that child labor will not decrease in the developing countries that are now seeing economic growth. The report predicts that there will still be 190 million child laborers in 2020 if nothing is done.

From the Guardian, writer Randeep Ramesh talks about the new development goal.

A UN report – to be launched on Monday morning by the UN's special envoy on education, the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown
– warns that unless the issue is tackled, the internationally agreed
millennium development goal that all children should complete primary
school by 2015 will not be achieved. Child labour, the UN says,
"exacerbates the risk of being out of school. In India, non-attendance
rates for child labourers are twice the level for children not involved
in child labour."

The research says the "sheer scale of child
labour is not widely recognised". About 60 million under-17-year-olds
are involved in global agriculture. Mining, it says, is a "magnet" for
child labour, with children as young as six digging shafts and scuttling
around mounds of rock with little more than a hammer and chisel. Around
half of the workforce in Afghanistan's brick kilns is aged under 14. In
Ethiopia almost 60% of children work.

Multinational companies
also come under fire. The report points out that in China, underage
labour recruited by networks of agents from poor rural areas "has been
found in factories supplying companies such as Apple, Samsung and
Google".

It also chides industry for failing in the past to keep
its side of the bargain in tackling the problem. US chocolate companies,
the UN notes, had promised to educate all children in areas where it
grew cocoa in west Africa – a commitment that would cost the industry
$75m or 0.1% of annual sales. Instead it spent about $20m over eight
years and reached just 4% of children in cocoa-growing communities in
Ivory Coast and 30% in Ghana.

The UN says that the first step
would be to make education compulsory for all children – and perhaps go
as far as paying families to send their children to school, an approach
that has worked in Brazil. This would mean that by 2015 an extra $13bn
in funding would be needed.

With a "Super Storm" hitting the Eastern US
right now, its a good time for a reminder of how hard extreme weather hits the
poor. Throughout the weekend friends of ours who live in the Eastern
US we sharing pictures of empty store shelves. The stores were emptied
because people had the money to clear out all of their merchandise. They had
the means to be prepared for the storm. Hurricanes that do hit our shores often
hit the poorer countries of the Caribbean
first.

A story we read today about rural Sri Lanka shows quite the opposite.
Many families do not have the means to protect themselves from the storm. The
only means they have of generating income through the crops they grow, often
gets wiped out by floods and droughts. Writer Amantha Perera of the Inter Press
Service interviews
one family that had two years worth of income wiped out.

Gamhevage Dayananda, a farmer from the remote village of Pansalgolla
in Sri Lanka’s north-central Polonnaruwa district, can attest to this
reality, as he and his fellow farmers struggle to survive alternating
periods of drought and flooding.

Unexpectedly heavy rains in February 2011 forced engineers to open
the sluice gates of large irrigation tanks in the area, flooding hectare
upon hectare of farmland, including Dayananda’s modest plot.

He lost his entire rice harvest, no small setback for his family of four who depend on this crop for their very survival.

This year, Dayananda found himself facing another crisis when drought
destroyed his crop and put him at risk of falling deeper into debt.

“One season it’s all rain, next it’s all sun,” Dayananda told IPS. “There is nothing in moderation, it is all in extremes.”

The trend of extreme weather events alternating year after year is
unlikely to change, according to W L Sumathipala, former head of the
climate change unit at the Ministry of Environment, adding that Sri
Lanka is at the receiving end of changing climate patterns.

Last year’s annual report for the United Nations Central Emergency
Response Fund (CERF) noted, “Climate-related emergencies, such as those
linked to drought, floods, and storms, expose the poor and most
vulnerable to hazards that have lasting consequences for the health,
livelihoods, and well-being of people who have the least capacity to
cope with and mitigate the effects of natural disasters.”

Currently about 8.9 percent of this South Asian island nation’s 21 million people live below the poverty line.

Of these, according to Abha Joshi-Ghani, head of the World Bank’s
Urban Development and Local Government Unit, “the poor in urban areas
are likely to be affected more by the changing climate patterns. They
are the most vulnerable because they live in sensitive areas, on
precarious land where no one else will settle.”

The British-based charity Homeless International estimates that 12
percent of Sri Lanka’s urban population of about three million can be
found in slums.

Defence and Urban Development Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was recently quoted as saying that shanty dwellers in the capital Colombo can be found “mostly on government lands”.

“Many of them are on the reservations set aside around the lakes, canals, roadways, and railway tracks,” he added.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

One person that has received a lot of acclaim for fighting poverty in America does so without any set outcomes. Maurice Lim Miller's Family Independence Initiative simple gives the families cash and a computer. They then cooperate with other families in the program to work together to climb out poverty. Families will share daycare, appliances or transportation to help each other out.

Lim Miller's method reminds us of Brazil's Bolsa Familia program, where families are simply given a bit of money and are entrusted to make the best decisions with it.

In a nutshell, Lim Miller explains, FII challenges the conventional
notion of "needs-based" poverty interventions and the stereotype that
low-income families are not capable and rely on outside guidance. To
this end, the organisation recruits small groups of struggling
low-income families in poorer communities (they must know one another
already) and incentivises them to work together to improve their
circumstances. Regardless of any state benefits
they receive, each family is given a computer and a modest stipend – no
more than $500 (£312) per quarter – in return for documenting and
reporting any progress they make by working with the other families.

These
small steps, says Lim Miller, can be anything from learning leadership
skills to increasing savings, to pooling resources for childcare so that
parents can get out to work. But whatever form it takes, the point is
that there are no professionals on the ground stipulating what their
goals should be, or instructing on how to reach them.

The
idea, Lim Miller stresses, is that low-income households are steered
away from dependency on welfare programmes, which, he says, "no matter
how well meaning are disempowering". It is taken for granted that the
families "will spend the money much more efficiently", he adds, if it is
simply handed over and left up to them. He says the guiding principle
is that people from poor backgrounds are neither the "victims" they are
often portrayed as by people on the left, or "lazy" and undeserving as
they are frequently labelled by the right. "Just like anyone else, these
families want some control and choice in their lives."

The
project, which Lim Miller acknowledges was a bold experiment when it
launched with a small cohort of families in Oakland almost a decade ago,
has grown steadily. There are now more than 350 families participating
in Boston, San Francisco and Oakland with further expansion planned,
including an online social networking hub. "In the first two years [of
the project] in Oakland, incomes jumped among the group by 27%. Savings
were up by 300%. Nine out of the 23 families had bought homes," he says.
The latest data from the initiative shows considerable progress in San
Francisco and Boston with average incomes up.

Lim Miller talks too
of a "ripple effect" within communities. "People can see that somebody
achieved something … Expectations change." The perception people have of
their life chances is critical, he argues. "If you are in a community
where no one is getting ahead, what does that do [to you]?"

The
participants are not families in crisis but those trying to get a foot
on the social mobility ladder. "I've been working with low-income
families for over 20 years. These are families who are trying, who want
to get out [of poverty] but are stuck," he explains.

Slavery still exists in the northern regions of Mali. While many still serve directly for their masters there are also other decendannts of slaves that don't have full human rights. The descendants of slaves could live on their own, but are still considered their masters property. The masters could take them or their belongings anytime they feel like it.

From the Guardian, writer Mark Tran talks to a few activists who are working to restore rights to the slaves in Mali.

"The slave population is already defenceless; it will become even
more so as the conflict intensifies. We are like the straw that will be
trampled underfoot when elephants fight," said Ibrahim Ag Idbaltanat, an
activist who received the Anti-Slavery International award in London last Wednesday.

Slavery
was formally abolished in Mali in the 1960s, after the country gained
independence from France. However, although slavery is not allowed under
the constitution, there is no anti-slavery law and descent-based
slavery through the maternal bloodline still exists in northern regions.

People
descended from slaves remain the "property" of their "masters", either
living with them and serving them directly, or living separately but
remaining under their control.

In 2006, Ag Idbaltanat set
up the anti-slavery group Temedt, which means "solidarity" in the
Tamasheq language of the north. Temedt says slavery is still practised
in the far north between Berber-descended Tuareg nomads and
darker-skinned Bella or black Tamasheq people.

The
descendants of slaves – 200,000 of whom are under direct control of
their masters – face threats from all sides because of the current
conflict, said Ag Idbaltanat, himself a descendant of slaves.

"We
are under suspicion from both the government and the rebels," he said.
"Old scores are being settled and anti-slavery activists who have
created a lot of enemies feel the threat of violence. We challenged the
state and slave owners so now we face threats as there are slave masters
among the rebel groups."

Ag Idbaltanat said the first
cases of punishment under sharia law by Islamists were imposed on slave
descendants, while former masters took advantage of the breakdown of
order to recapture slaves they had lost.

"They can act with
impunity – 18 children of slaves were kidnapped recently by traditional
masters of their families," said Ag Idbaltanat. "Before the rebellion,
we had 17 anti-slavery cases before the courts in the north, but the
courts are no longer there."

He described as dire conditions in his hometown of Menaka, which was
captured by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, a Tuareg
rebel group, in January. Public services have been shut down, schools
are closed, there is no drinking water as there is no electricity for
the filtration system, and people now have to fetch unclean water from
natural basins in the desert.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A new survey shows that a majority of Catholics think that the church should focus more on helping the poor than on abortion. This was probably widely reported yesterday, but we wanted to make sure to mention it at our blog. We are pretty excited about this news because we feel that this should be the greatest concern not only for the church but for the whole world.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops instead focus on abortion, and no matter what you might feel about this issue, let's face facts... Roe vs Wade is not going to be overturned anytime soon. The history of three pro-life Presidents since the legalization of abortion should be proof enough. No, Romney won't be able to overturn it, unless the entire Supreme Court retires during his presidency.

The church should instead focus more on something that could immediately impact lives, something that even non-Christians would support, something that is mandated by Scripture.

The 2012 American Values Survey finding on Catholics goes against the
focus of many U.S. Catholic bishops, who have stressed the church's ban
on abortion and artificial contraception in their public policy
statements.

The poll found that 60 percent of Catholics want a
greater focus on social justice issues rather than abortion, while 31
percent support the opposite approach.

The divide was true even
among Catholics who attend church once a week or more, a group often
considered more socially conservative. A slim majority of this group, 51
percent, thought the church should focus more on social justice issues.

"The
survey confirms that there is no such thing as the 'Catholic vote,'"
said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the institute and co-author of
the report. The survey included more than 3,000 respondents. "There are a
number of critical divisions among Catholics, including an important
divide between 'social justice' and `right to life' Catholics."

For many years the poor countries were unable to keep any educated residents
from leaving for better opportunity. This "brain drain" further
crippled the economies of the poor nations, as the educated would take their
knowledge and earnings elsewhere. This trend is beginning to reverse and it
will be great news for the fortunes of poor nations.

The "brain gain" trend is being helped
by the recent global recession as the educated are finding economic
opportunity dwindling in rich nations. As these people return home,
their return has a ripple effect on the rest of their homeland.

Meteorologists are forecasting more drought like conditions for Kenya and Eastern Africa again next year. Many people who live there have not recovered from the last one in 2011. In the efforts to help withstand the next drought, an NGO has found one solution can be found with the sheep and cattle herders in the region.

From the Guardian, writer Peter Guest tells us about the effort to help pastoralists.

"If they could get the business component, poverty is not a word you
could use in Turkana," says Desterius Mulama, financial officer for
Cezam and Associates, a Kenyan firm working with the US African Development Foundation (USADF) to improve food security.

Mulama
moved to Turkana a year ago to work on the project. He is amazed at the
scale of the herds in the region. "There is one old man who has 3,000
camels and 10,000 goats, but he walks barefoot," Mulama says. "If he
sold just half of them, he would be a millionaire."

A
government census put the number of goats in the county at around 5
million, with 1.5 million cattle. All across Turkana, herders carrying
crooks pick their way through acacia trees, guiding huge flocks.

In
many cases pastoralists still view animals as wealth and, even when the
pasture dries up and there is no water, they will not sell them. The
animals die and people starve. Building sustainable trading structures
and introducing pastoralists to the cash economy should, Mulama hopes,
ease them out of cycles of drought and food insecurity. "For
pastoralists, our biggest challenge is to educate them on holding
capacity," Mulama says. "Why should I hold 1,000 goats when I can only
feed 100?"

Traders from Nairobi are starting to visit the
markets in Turkana. Under Mulama's guidance, and with seed funding from
USADF, the district livestock marketing council now has offices and
computer equipment, and its staff have been trained in bookkeeping and
other management disciplines so they will be able to build better
commercial links with the rest of the country. A recent sale of 1,000
head of goats for export has raised hopes that the model may work.

Nigeria sits upon the seventh largest deposit of oil in the world. Still, getting enough power to the people is a daily problem, with blackouts being an everyday occurrence. Nigeria only generates one tenth of the power that South Africa does, while having a bigger population.

So the Nigerian government is beginning an ambitions plan to privatize all of their power concerns. This brings with it another wave of worries and criticism. Power oligarchs that have gotten rich off of government contracts are in the front of the bidding process. Many of these same oligarchs have no expertise in power. Despite the concerns, Nigeria might have to proceed with them.

As with Russia in its 1992-1994 sell off of state assets, it is
entrenched political and business elites who look set to win much of
Nigeria's power sector, even while Western aid agencies are backing the
process with tens of millions of dollars.

The government
announced preferred bidders for 10 power distribution firms this week
and has approved bids for five power plants, a major step forward. But
already the companies who lost out and labour unions have said the
process was fraudulent and the results to be scrapped.

The
wealthy figures behind the consortia bidding already control vast stakes
in Nigeria's economy and political machine, and many of the assets only
had one approved bidder each. It is often felt that since the oligarchs
have such sway in Nigeria, it is better to have them in the process
rather than outside it.

In past Nigerian privatisation efforts,
unqualified bidders and political wrangling caused years of legal
battles and delays after assets were awarded. Sometimes funds were
diverted to people who failed to revive the firms and left debts unpaid.

....

The Power Holding Company of Nigeria is being sold as six generation
firms and 11 distribution companies. A contract for transmission has
been given to Canadian firm Manitoba Hydro.

Among the figures
angling for a slice of privatised power is billionaire businessman Emeka
Offor. His company Chrome Group is the highest bidder for firms in the
capital Abuja and Enugu.

Offor made his fortune from government contracts, especially under military dictator Sani Abacha in 1990s.

Between
1999 and 2002, Chrome Group worked on a $100 million contract for
maintenance on Nigeria's Port Harcourt oil refineries, in Africa's
biggest oil industry. They have operated at just 30 percent capacity
since, and the state oil firm has said the work was not done properly.

"The
turnaround maintenance was successfully completed and duly handed over
to Port Harcourt Refining Company," Chrome Group spokeswoman Val Oji
wrote in an email, with the relevant completion certificates attached,
when asked about it.

Global Witness, a UK-based watchdog,
investigated Offor's Seychelles-registered oil firm Starcrest in
February. It said it won an oil block in 2006, then within months signed
Swiss firm Addax on as 'technical partner' for a $35 million fee.

That
deal left Starcrest with a big minority stake, and Addax, the firm with
the expertise to produce the oil, paid a $55 million signature bonus.
Offor told the NGO that Nigeria's financial crimes commission had
cleared Starcrest of wrongdoing.

The deal resembles arrangements
common in Nigeria, in which a company r un by a local oligarch 'partners'
with a foreign firm with the know how, and takes a cut.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Muhammad Yunus is one of this blogger's biggest heroes. But it has been a while since we have linked to any news about him... so lets put a stop to that right now.

Yunus is in Scotland this week to begin a new school at Caledonian University to study poverty fighting efforts. This will coincide with the launch of a new Grammen Bank branch in Glasgow. Yunus' Grammen Bank is spreading its microcredit efforts throughout the developed world. Still, there is some debate on whether it would work in richer nations.

BBC reporter Gillian Sharpe takes a look at the new branch of Grammen Bank.

In her corner office, Glasgow Caledonian University Principal Prof
Pamela Gillies is explaining how she sees the possibilities offered by
the bank.

"I think this is going to be one of the biggest public health
interventions in Scotland since the banning of smoking in public
places," she says.

"It is an idea that crosses cultures and economic boundaries
and gives control and responsibility for the health and well-being of
their everyday lives back to the poorest people in society."

....

There's a transformation of another kind taking place in the Provanmill area of Glasgow.

At three or four tables people have come to a lunch club run
by local women. There is lentil soup, as well as a roll and sausage on
offer, a chance to chat and a couple of games of bingo - all for a
couple of pounds.

The women - all volunteers - who run this place are part of a self-reliance group facilitated by the Church of Scotland.

Each member contributes a small amount of money each week which goes to buy ingredients for the following week.

One of those involved is Jake Crawley, whose dream is to set up her own laundry and create herself a job.

The ultimate aim of this project is to help her do that -
there are potential premises in the church where the lunch club is run.

Since they set up about 18 months ago, the women have driven the lunch club forward by their own efforts.

Now they are getting together costings with a view to setting up the laundry as a business.
For that they will need some kind of micro loan and Ms
Crawley says she will need help to ease her off benefits and hopefully
into her own business.

"Myself, I would rather move on," she comments. "Get our
laundry set up and I create myself a job, because that's what I want to
do - not because a job centre or work programme is forcing me to do
jobs."

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A little good news today, from the African success story of Ghana. Even with the economy performing well, Ghana still struggles with an education gap between men and women. This gap makes it difficult for women to earn a meaningful wage later on in life.

The education charity Camfed has teamed up with Mastercard to give women a kick-start. Women who were educated by Camfed can apply for grants from Mastercard Foundation to invest in their own businesses.

Camfed – which has provided funding for more than 66,000 children to
attend primary and secondary school in Ghana since 1998 – believes it
has found a way to supplement the poor quality education on offer in
state-run schools. In 2002 it created a Ghana "Cama network" of Camfed
alumni, which brings together young women who have graduated with its
support.

Cama members are able to access skills training on
financial literacy, business, leadership and life skills through the
network's twice-monthly meetings. And since last year, those who
complete training are eligible for "innovation bursaries" – a
Camfed/Mastercard Foundation collaboration that offers small grants to
female entrepreneurs to kickstart their businesses, together with work
experience in relevant industries. Since the first nine bursaries were
awarded in Ghana last September, six women have launched businesses, and
all are turning a profit, says Camfed.

In Fuo, a rural
suburb of Tamale, the capital of Ghana's northern region and one of the
poorest parts of the country, 31-year-old Balchesu Iddrisu has turned
her husband's family compound into a small food processing hub. Outside
are mounds of rice, which she has employed a local elderly woman to
sift, removing stones.

A room inside the building contains
piles of wheat, soya and maize, which Iddrisu blends with milk creamer
and groundnuts to make her own recipe for "weenie mix" – breakfast
porridge. Iddrisu sells more than 1,200 units of weenie mix a month – at
about £1 a bag – and she has begun approaching large supermarket chains
and hospitals to buy in bulk. By buying her ingredients directly from
local farmers, she says she has cut out middle men and is able to
influence the quality of producers' crops.

"I am very happy
with the way my business is going," Iddrisu says. "It helps me and my
family a lot. I didn't even know I could reach this level, with people
working under me and creating jobs in my community. In 10 years' time I
believe that I will have my own factory, and I will be training many
people to become entrepreneurs."

Chelsea Clinton is getting involved in her parents Clinton Health Initiative
to help prevent diarrhea in Nigeria.
Dehydration is a rampant problem in undeveloped areas and very few of the people who live there have access to treatments.

"It is unconscionable that in the 21st century, children still die of
diarrhea," Clinton told Reuters in an exclusive interview by phone from
Abuja, Nigeria.

The ORS and zinc work in Nigeria is in
coordination with the Clinton Health Access Initiative or CHAI, on whose
board Clinton serves. She has stepped up her public role in the
family's global philanthropic efforts and in July took a six-day tour of
Africa with her father, who founded the William J. Clinton Foundation
in 2001.

The goal of the initiative in Nigeria is to help drive
down the cost of high-quality ORS and zinc treatments and increase
awareness for them, said Clinton, currently a doctoral candidate in
international relations at the University of Oxford.

Currently,
fewer than 2 percent of children in Nigeria have access to the World
Health Organization-recommended treatment. Increasing the number of
children with access to the therapy to 80 percent by 2015 would help
prevent an estimated 220,000 deaths in Nigeria.

"I would like to
see us make real, measurable progress here in Nigeria and in the other
countries where we are working on ORS zinc," said Clinton, including
Uganda and parts of India, as part of the Clinton Health Access
Initiative's new push to improve access to essential medicines for
children.

"For me, it's not complicated. We know what works and
we should be doing more of it. And when we don't know what works, we
should be innovating and spending time and energy on designing these
solutions to solve problems that haven't been solved yet," said Clinton.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The International Red Cross has a new report that takes a look at the forced migration throughout the world. The Red Cross has found that over 70 million people have been forced away from their homes because of armed conflict or disaster.

The World Disasters Report 2012 said most forced migrants are
displaced for the long term or are permanently dispossessed, requiring
governments and humanitarian agencies to adopt more flexible approaches
to migration
and integration. The cost to the international community of forced
migration is at least $8bn (£4.9bn) a year, according to the report.

"The
nature of forced displacement is much more unpredictable than in the
past and much more complex," said Professor Roger Zetter, the report's
editor. "The headline figure of 70 million – one in every 100 people –
is significant in itself. It refers not just to people displaced by
general conflict but to those displaced by disaster and by development
itself – the hidden losers of resettlement projects and increasingly of
land grabs."

The report highlights how forced migration has
become increasingly "urbanised" as cities and urban areas become the
main destinations for refugees,
internally displaced people (IDPs), and those affected by disasters and
conflicts. That marks a change from the 1980s and 1990s, when
displacement was synonymous with camps. Now, about half of the world's
estimated 10.5 million refugees and at least 13 million IDPs are thought
to live in urban areas.

"The mere mention of the term
'refugees' invokes images of tents and camps in most people's minds, but
our new report may get us to think differently as we have noted marked
movements of refugees into cities. This is not a new trend, but it is
one that is increasing," said Barry Armstrong, British Red Cross
disaster response manager. "The situation in Syria and surrounding countries is a case in point, but there are many other places where people have left home to escape violence."

In
the past decade, cities and towns in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Yemen
and Haiti have absorbed large numbers of people fleeing conflict or
disaster. In Sudan, the 40-year civil war that culminated in the
declaration of South Sudan's independence last year contributed to
massive urbanisation – despite the absence of industry and commerce.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

One thing has been missing during this U.S. Presidential campaign... any
talk about lifting the poor out of poverty.

Both the candidates have ignored the issue because they are
not trying to earn the votes of those in poverty. Instead they have focused on the
issues important to the middle class, single professionals, and senior
citizens.

Still the plight of the poor is one of this nation’s biggest
tragedies. Without any candidate talking about it, it will be very hard to get
any action to improve this issue.

The only bright spot we could find is from the advocacy
organization Circle of Protection. They asked for each candidate to record a
video that outlines their platform for poverty issues. You can view each
of the videos at this
link.

From NPR, we learn of another organization trying to get the candidates to talk about poverty.

Melissa Boteach heads Half in Ten, a campaign by progressive groups to cut poverty in half in 10 years.

"The
problem is that when politicians talk about jobs, they don't talk about
how they're going to reach the most vulnerable people who have been out
of work for the longest time," she says.

Her group and other anti-poverty advocates are so frustrated by the
candidates' lack of attention to the topic, they've launched a Twitter
campaign with the hashtag "#talkpoverty." They're trying to get someone
to ask the presidential candidates in the debates what they would do to
reduce childhood poverty in their first 100 days. So far, they've had no
luck.

"When you don't talk about something, it's hard to build the political will to implement it," says Boteach.

Anti-poverty advocates say they're especially disappointed because they
think Obama has a very good record to run on. They credit him with
keeping millions of additional people out of poverty during the
recession with stimulus spending on things such as expanded tax credits
for low-income families, unemployment insurance and food stamps. And
they note that his health care law will extend Medicaid coverage to
millions of additional poor people.

...

But Republicans say one only has to look at the high poverty rate to see that Obama's approach has not worked.

"If
someone's in poverty, what do you do about it?" asks Kevin Hassett, an
economist with the American Enterprise Institute and a Romney adviser.
"What you do is you fix the economy."

Hassett
says Obama's plan is largely to expand government aid, but he says it's
this spending that's helping to keep the poor in poverty.

"We've
got people in poverty that can't find a job [and] that have to rely
upon the government safety net, which should be there to protect them,"
he says. "But the reason they have to rely on the government safety net
is that we have a president that hasn't thought, 'Geez, you know, being
the highest corporate tax place on Earth is a bad idea.' "

Monday, October 15, 2012

Some dire warnings came out today about the world food supply. The United
Nations is predicting that if current conditions keep up, we could see a major
collapse. The crisis could be similar to what was seen in 2008 when food prices
sparked riots around the globe.

"We've not been producing as much as we are consuming. That is why
stocks are being run down. Supplies are now very tight across the world
and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected
events next year," said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the
UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO). With food consumption exceeding the amount grown
for six of the past 11 years, countries have run down reserves from an
average of 107 days of consumption 10 years ago to under 74 days
recently.

Prices of main food crops such as wheat and maize are
now close to those that sparked riots in 25 countries in 2008. FAO
figures released this week suggest that 870 million people are
malnourished and the food crisis is growing in the Middle East and
Africa. Wheat production this year is expected to be 5.2% below 2011,
with yields of most other crops, except rice, also falling, says the UN.

The
figures come as one of the world's leading environmentalists issued a
warning that the global food supply system could collapse at any point,
leaving hundreds of millions more people hungry, sparking widespread
riots and bringing down governments. In a shocking new assessment of the
prospects of meeting food needs, Lester Brown, president of the Earth
policy research centre in Washington, says that the climate is no longer
reliable and the demands for food are growing so fast that a breakdown
is inevitable, unless urgent action is taken.

"Food shortages
undermined earlier civilisations. We are on the same path. Each country
is now fending for itself. The world is living one year to the next," he
writes in a new book.

According to Brown, we are seeing the start
of a food supply breakdown with a dash by speculators to "grab"
millions of square miles of cheap farmland, the doubling of
international food prices in a decade, and the dramatic rundown of
countries' food reserves.

The plight of the poor cannot be improved as long as the government over
them has no regard for human rights. That is essentially the situation now in
the Democratic Republic of Congo. Recent elections that brought the
current leadership to power were widely corrupt. There are also reports of many
killings, rapes and more against the citizens in the northern
provinces of the Congo.

Despite all the turmoil a summit of heads of state is taking place there. A
coalition of French speaking nations is conducting meetings at the capital of Congo. Leaders
attending the summit are openly criticizing the Congo government but still we
wonder if it is enough. The nation ranks last worldwide in measures of health,
education, and wealth.

"Democracy is not a lesson. Democracy is a right, and for those in
power it is a responsibility," French President Francois Hollande told
reporters after a meeting with civil society group leaders in Kinshasa.

Hollande is the star invitee to this year's Francophonie summit - the
first to be held in central Africa - but cast a pall over preparations
last week by calling Congo's rights record "totally unacceptable".

Representatives from more than 70 French-speaking countries have
arrived in Kinshasa for the 14th Francophonie summit which runs until
Oct 14, with Congo's M23 rebellion and the Islamist takeover of northern
Mali topping the agenda.

At the summit's opening ceremony Hollande greeted Kabila with the
briefest of handshakes while warmly embracing Abdou Diouf, the former
Senegalese president and current secretary general of the Francophonie.

Members of Hollande's entourage said Hollande had earlier met
privately with Kabila for a "frank and direct" discussion about human
rights that lasted 30 minutes.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Indonesia has made a ground breaking step that will help improve access to cheap drugs for people with HIV. The Indonesian government has voided all patents for ARV drugs that people with HIV need to prolong their lives. This will allow companies to make generic forms of the drug that can be available at a low cost. Activists hope that other countries will follow suit to further expand access to the drugs.

From the Guardian, reporter Sarah Boseley details this at her Global Health blog.

The "government use" order was made on 3 September, but with no
fanfare and, as yet, no public outcry from the pharmaceutical giants
which, in the past, used to defend their patents volubly and
aggressively – through the courts as well as diplomatic back-channels.
Times have changed somewhat, with much greater public awareness of the
toll of treatable diseases and the high price of medicines in developing
countries. The biggest fights now are in India, where Big Pharma is
battling to preserve its patents, arguing that India's thriving generic
companies will sell not just to the poor but to the whole world.

But
what has happened in Indonesia is remarkable for its scale. It appears
that the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has decided to
license the entire slate of medicines its population needs against HIV.
It already had an order from 2007 for three older HIV drugs (efavirenz,
lamivudine and nevirapine), but the new decree states specifically that
this is "no longer sufficient".

The drug patents belong to Merck,
GSK, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abbott and Gilead. The drugs include Glaxo's
Abacavir and Abbott's Kaletra, which are both useful combinations, as
well as Gilead's tenofovir (Viread), which treats hepatitis B as well as
being the mainstay of the new prevention treatment for people whose
partners are HIV positive. The order says the companies will receive a
0.5% royalty.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

There is enough land in Africa to grow more than enough food for all of its people, but what they grow in reality is far behind their potential. A new study released today focuses on wheat production in Africa. The study claims that Africa is only growing 10 to 25 percent of its potential.

This echos what OXFAM said last week about Africa, but their report focused on how the land is misused by land grabs or investment speculators. A good proportion of farm-able land in Africa sits empty while a foreign investor holds onto it. Some land that is being farmed is not human consumption of food but for cars instead with Ethanol.

The authors admit that wheat is not a tropical plant, but maintains that it can be grown in the high elevation areas of Rwanda, Burundi and others. From Reuters Alert Net, writer Alister Doyle tells us more about why wheat is important for Africa.

The report, examining environmental conditions of 12 nations from
Ethiopia to Zimbabwe, said that farmers south of the Sahara grew only 44
percent of the wheat consumed locally, meaning dependence on
international markets prone to price spikes.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has extensive areas of land that are suitable for
profitably producing wheat under rain-fed conditions," according to the
study by the non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center.

It said countries in the region were producing only between 10 and 25
percent of the amounts that the Center's research suggested was
"biologically possible and economically profitable" with a net return of
$200 per hectare (2.5 acres).

The 89-page study, issued at a wheat conference in Ethiopia, said it
aimed to identify ways to raise wheat production as "a hedge against
food insecurity, political instability and price shocks."

"Wheat is not an African crop, it is not a tropical crop (but) many
governments want to produce wheat locally instead of paying for
imports," Hans-Joachim Braun, director of the Center's global wheat
program, told Reuters by telephone.

The report estimated that African nations would spend about $12
billion to import 40 million tonnes of wheat in 2012, particularly for
fast-growing cities. More wheat should not be grown at the expense of
other more viable crops, Braun said.

Many countries in the under-developed world have seen economic growth over the last 10 to 15 years. The new head of the World Bank today is telling the world to keep it up and warns that the world could be headed for another economic slump.

In an interview with Bloomberg, new World Bank head Jim Yong Kim warns that a slowdown in investments could reverse all of the gains made in Africa and Latin America. Writers Sara Eisen and Andrew Joyce have this detail of the interview.

“Our job now is to make sure the growth over the last five years that
we’ve seen in Africa and Latin America is not destroyed by further
worsening in the situation,” Kim said in an interview with Bloomberg
Television today on a Japanese bullet train to Sendai, a city in the
region hit hardest by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

The
World Bank and International Monetary Fund are holding their annual
meetings in Tokyo this week as low growth in the richest economies hurts
developing counterparts from China to Brazil
to South Africa. Kim endorsed the IMF’s view that there is an
“alarmingly high risk” of a steeper world slowdown, with a one-in-six
chance of growth slipping below 2 percent.

Kim, 52, said that
more than half of global growth over last five years has come from
developing nations, where job creation is key.

“We’re working
very actively with all our member countries to find ways to spur growth
in the private sector in Africa, Latin America, everywhere,” he said.

The
Washington-based lender said last week that the global economy will
need to create 600 million new jobs between 2005 and 2020 to absorb
young people entering the work force and spur development.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

A new report from the United Nations says the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger by 2015 is within reach. The U. N. says that the percentage of hungry people in the world was at 23 percent in 1990. The percentage is now down to 15 percent, for a total of 870 million people. The figures come from the new State of Food Insecurity report from the U. N.s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Reporter Claire Provost of the Guardian breaks down more figures from the report.

"The good news … is the hunger target of MDG one is achievable," said
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant director general for economic and social
development at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). "There has
been more progress than previously thought, and we're within striking
distance."

Significantly, the figures do not show an
increase in global hunger following the recent food price and economic
crises. However, the report finds that from 2007 there has been "a
significant slowdown" in progress, bringing hunger reduction
"essentially to a halt for the developing countries as a whole". This
will need to be reversed if the MDG is to be met, it says.

Tempering premature celebrations further, the report says the number of hungry people in the world "remains unacceptably high".

There
are stark variations between regions. The figures put Asia and the
Pacific, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, almost on track for
achieving their MDG hunger targets. Undernourishment in sub-Saharan
Africa has improved less rapidly, and western Asia has seen an increase
in the percentage of hungry people.

The report, launched by three UN food agencies ahead of the Committee on World Food Security
meetings in Rome next week, calls for investment in smallholder
farmers, "nutrition-sensitive" policies, and the creation of
comprehensive social protection systems that target the poor.

OXFAM is warning that there are some signs that Somalia could be in crisis again soon. El-Nino rains are underway and increasing hunger could plunge the country into famine just as it experienced last year.

The ongoing armed conflict with al-Shabaab has moved away from the major city of Mogadishu. The city has returrned to life and it gives false sense of improvement according to OXFAM. Their report surveyed residents of Somalia to see if they worry about meeting needs in the near future.

We believe that as long as the armed conflict continues Somalia will always be at or near a crisis state regardless the weather. The government is focusing their efforts on defeating their enemy instead of agriculture and health. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab prevents aid from entering the areas they control. Aid agencies also avoid any areas of heavy fighting for the safety of their workers.

In a survey of over 1,800 households carried out by Oxfam in South
Central Somalia and Puntland, 72 percent of respondents were worried
they would not have enough to eat over the next four months and 42
percent said they were already skipping meals.

“If we don’t continue the humanitarian aid that is currently getting
in, then we could actually fall off the edge of the cliff again,” said
Ed Pomfret, Oxfam’s Somalia campaign manager.

Somalia was at the epicentre of a hunger crisis that devastated
swathes of the Horn of Africa last year. But Pomfret said the world’s
attention had now shifted to the Sahel food crisis and conflict in the
Great Lakes region and the Sudans.

More aid is going into Mogadishu where the security situation has
improved since African Union forces ousted the al Qaeda-affiliated
militant group al Shabaab last year. It is now a bustling city where
bullet-riddled houses are slowly being repaired and replaced.

But most of the aid is short term and agencies still find it difficult to work outside the capital.

Although African Union forces and the Ethiopian military have pushed
al Shabaab out of most major towns – taking the militia’s last
stronghold, the port city of Kismayu, last month – the countryside is still largely under al Shabaab’s control.

Aid agencies have to negotiate access with various militias on the ground on a case-by-case basis.